


me he she

by tongari



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-01
Updated: 2011-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-15 06:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tongari/pseuds/tongari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Maeda Keiji.</p>
            </blockquote>





	me he she

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has many things so not going for it. It is unnecessarily emo; it is written in second person; the last half was written almost half a year after the first and seems so disconnected. Keiji's backstory does drive me nuts though so I decided to finish this albeit with insufficient Hanbei. I am sorry.
> 
> Title derived from the RADWIMPS song [me me she](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maMU4hUdfhY), watch it and weep. (I did)

In the beginning there were three. There was you, always getting in trouble; Hideyoshi, always getting you out of it; and Nene, always refusing to talk to both of you when word got back to her. She towered over both of you back then, but you were already a big kid and she must have known that advantage wouldn't last long. You remember sitting on the steps of the kitchen, elbow to elbow with Hideyoshi, your backs against the locked door; hugging your stomachs and waiting until everyone else was done eating and she would let you in and forgive you. You remember the door sliding open, Hideyoshi wordlessly nudging you in the ribs, Nene waiting for you to apologize. How you'd jump to your feet and run into her arms when she said she forgave you.

"I love you, Nene," you used to tell her. "I'll marry you when I grow up!"

She would laugh and tell you, one: she'll never marry naughty boys, and two: you'll stop saying that when you're older, and she'll remind you about it and totally embarrass you in front of your future wife. "Like Hideyoshi is looking embarrassed for you now," she'd point out. And you laughed because Hideyoshi really was always looking down at his feet, never looking directly at her; as if his big clumsy glance might knock her over accidentally, shatter her into pieces.

"Don't you want to marry Nene too?" you asked him. "She's so nice and pretty and smart!"

"You're making him very uncomfortable," Nene said. But she was laughing, and as you put your arm around Hideyoshi's shoulders, you could kind of tell he was very happy that she was laughing. That's how you knew you were right; he wanted to marry her too.

How happy that used to make you.

*

You grow up, bum around, and continue proposing to Nene recklessly every other month. She's not around that often now, just enough for you to feel that at least the two of you are still here. Hideyoshi has some kind of job, serving some kind of lord, somewhere, you don't understand. All you care about is that he sporadically manages to sneak off and go drinking around the country with you. But Nene seems to be really busy these days, hardly ever at home, and when she's back she's always busy with tea ceremonies, embroidery, music. One day you go over to her house and the servants tell you she's attending a miai, meeting a prospective bridegroom. You shrug your shoulders at the news and sit down on the kitchen steps to wait it out until she gets back. Hideyoshi isn't free today, but that's probably just as well; you're both so big now, there is no longer space on the stairs for his shoulders _and_ yours in the doorway. So you sit there, alone, thinking about the three of you, wondering what kind of guy this is that Nene's parents think she should marry.

"Bet he wasn't as handsome as me," you tell Nene, when she returns.

She kisses you on the cheek and tells you, "Actually, he was even more handsome.."

"Uooh! Impossible!"

"Well, everyone tells me I'm crazy to say so, because you're definitely more handsome than him," she says. "But I love him, so it's hard for me to say."

"But don't you love me too, Nene?"

"Of course I love you too," she says. "But I'm so sorry, Keiji. I can only marry one of you."

*

Oddly, after they get married, there are four, and not the way you expect it. You come over for dinner one day at their invitation and the servants respectfully usher you into a room that contains neither of the friends you came here to see. It is instead packed with books, maps, paintings, and inhabited by something you reckon fits just in between human and cat: all fuzzy white hair, huge disdainful eyes and a long lazy slouch upon the floor-cushions that manages to both sprawl and look graceful all at once. He is reading a scroll when you walk in; he looks up at you, then drops his gaze back to his scroll without comment.

You go over, give him a huge bear hug, then put him in an headlock.

"Hanbei, no," Hideyoshi says when he walks in and finds you rolling around on the floor, trying desperately to protect your shins, groin and nose from the vicious and surprisingly swift feet of the strange creature. "Please stop kicking him. This is my friend. Keiji."

"It has a name?" the aggressor says. That voice, saying those few words, make the loveliest, smoothest, most poisonous sound you have ever heard, poised and aimed like a blade at you. But it fades toward the end, and you don't hear it again. You look up and realize your opponent is, quite spontaneously, passing out. Hideyoshi manages to catch hold of him just as he loses consciousness. You get to your feet and help lay him out on the floor. Although you doubt Hideyoshi needed the help; even with a thick haori and kimono weighing him down, Hanbei is so small and slight, he feels no heavier than a wet kitten.

"He's not well," Hideyoshi says. "That is no excuse for him to abuse you. I will tell him."

"He should come stay with me," you offer. "Auntie Matsu would fatten him up in no time."

"You'd kill each other," Nene says.

She's standing in the open doorway, her long hair pinned up as you had expected, and dreaded. But her face is as open and tender as she was when you were children; when you once, earnestly, told her you'd know her face even if she was bald, and earned yourself an indignant slap upside the head. You want to run to her, but you don't. Instead you ask, jokingly, "Kids grow up so fast these days! So which side of the family does he take after?"

"Oh, no, no, don't say that." Nene presses her face into Hideyoshi's shoulder, shaking with laughter. "He'd really kill you if he heard that."

"Anyway," Hideyoshi says, putting his arm around her, and then he stops, falters.

"Anyway?"

"If we do have a son," Nene says, "we'll name him after you."

You feel like crying, but you've taught yourself that it's always better to laugh instead. So you laugh, and hug both of them, and after a while you can hear them laughing along with you.

*

After dinner you sit down on the porch, with Hideyoshi and Nene, to watch the fireflies on the river. Hanbei has excused himself to continue reading in the library. From time to time you can hear him coughing furiously through the open windows.

Nene settles down to one side of the porch with her shoulder against the wall, leaving you no choice but to wait for her husband to join her before you, too, sit down. Once you do, though, it all feels all right. You're together again, and tomorrow Hideyoshi is going to sneak away from his - you loathe that word - _duty_ \- and you're both going to go around the country raising hell, just like before he got married. Nene still isn't going to approve but when you come back she'll forgive you. You're sure she will.

"You're awfully quiet," Nene says.

"Who - me or Hideyoshi?"

"Hideyoshi's always quiet. Of course I mean you."

"I'm just thinking. Your kid is scary!"

Hideyoshi rumbles with laughter; his elbow knocks against yours and you yelp at the impact, punch him in the arm. Nene says, "He's not our kid."

"Is he really a samurai?"

"He is more than just a samurai," Hideyoshi says.

He looks at you for a while, his face uncertain. You've seen this look on his face before. It was the first time he wanted to give Nene a trinket and realized you hadn't brought anything to give to her, too..

It occurs to you that you could be kind, as you had been back then. Shove an elbow in his ribs and tell him to, "Go on," just as you always used to say, with what you hoped was a warm smile. But the smile always felt cold on your face, you never liked how it felt. You've done it so many times, you don't feel like doing it now. So you don't.

"Samurais shouldn't come here," you say. "This isn't a place for warriors. It's a place of love and peace and good food and friends. Tell him to go away."

"This will never be a place for warriors," Hideyoshi says. "To keep it this way, we need warriors."

"You sound like my uncle," you reply.

"Your uncle has something he wants to protect. I have something I want to protect." For this moment you imagine he holds Nene's hand a little tighter... "It's hard to do that alone, and Lord Oda is--"

" _Lord_ Oda!"

"Keiji," Nene says.

He's quiet after that, but his face looks like he's not done talking yet and you sense from the way he glances at Nene that there's something he wants to tell you, something he doesn't want her to hear. You know you should be a good friend and linger on the porch, wait for Nene to grow tired and go to bed, and then turn to Hideyoshi and ask him what is it he's thinking about, all the time that he never says anything. But you're tired, and there's a stranger in the house, and you look over at Nene leaning on Hideyoshi's shoulder and in your heart you know, selfishly, that you just don't want to. So you don't.

*

Everyone knows what happened next. The trouble with everyone knowing is that you never need to talk about it, to explain why it was that this thing happened. Then you end up forgetting the reason why it happened. All you are left with is the aftermath, the reality. Another grave to bring flowers to, a trinket to tie to a cord and wear around your neck, an empty house whose doorway you sometimes still go back and sit in. After a while you stop doing these things because, you realize, it doesn't do anyone any good. But you keep wearing her trinket, long after she is gone; because it's the one that he, stammering, held out to her and said was a present from him and from you.

*

Years later, when you find yourself up on the cliffs of Mikatahagara drinking with an alarmingly grown-up Tokugawa Ieyasu, both of you bruised and sore from fighting and pleasantly tipsy from a barrel of some unnameable substance only Yumekichi knows the origins of - you are leaning back against a pillar, when you look at Ieyasu's face, in the shadow of his hood, and you feel that something is going to happen again. The feeling hits you now as suddenly as it did, back then. You had been laughing together about something and then you made a joke about the silhouette cast by Mitsunari's coat-tails when he crouched over to run (about Matsunaga Hisahide's ridiculous facial hair), and then you realized Ieyasu wasn't laughing (and then you realized Hideyoshi wasn't smiling). Now he is somewhere far away, listening to his own thoughts, old fears recently given new life. (The next time you saw him he no longer looked directly at you, didn't answer your questions, you had to run back to look for Nene yourself--)

"Such a serious face for Keiji to make.. What are you thinking about?"

You start in surprise, and some guilt.

"Sorry, sorry.. I should probably get going, shouldn't I? You look busy, you have things to do.."

You gesture at the hills and valleys swarming with yellow flags, soldiers swarming from camp to camp fixing the barriers you broke through. In the distance you hear a disdainful, electrical noise as Tadakatsu is repaired; you cringe in embarrassment, and Ieyasu gracefully pretends not to notice.

"There are always a lot of things to do," Ieyasu says. "But I will always appreciate if you can tell me what you think I should or shouldn't do."

"You shouldn't have killed him," you say.

It leaves your mouth automatically; you wonder if you should jump after it and try to get it back. Ieyasu flinches, almost even before he hears the words. His fists clench for a moment, then relax.

"What shouldn't I do next?" he asks.

His face is lifted to the sky, his hood fallen back. With difficulty you draw yourself to your full height, yet find yourself still only just barely taller than him. After your skirmish you're so tired, you hurt all over, all you want to do is go back and soak in a hot spring, sleep for a hundred years. Beside you, Ieyasu seems to have already forgotten all his cuts and bruises, seems to be already heading into battle, glowing with all the confidence of a new sun. And yet, and yet, and yet, you feel that something is going to happen.

"Life is short," you hear yourself saying. "So - love."

He looks at you, and for a moment you see the wide-eyed surprise you saw in him as a boy, when his head barely came up to your elbow. It dissolves all too quickly into that cocky, grown-up smile he wears too much for your liking these days. But you are heartened to discover he can still be surprised. Perhaps he can still surprise himself.

*

Too many rumours reach you and you don't know for sure what happens in the end. You sift through the various reports and ascertain a few things. Kobayakawa betrayed the Western army. Tokugawa Ieyasu was victorious at the battle of Sekigahara. Ishida Mitsunari was taken prisoner, and, by some accounts, executed. The country is, slowly, prospering under the Tokugawa shogunate. You can't help but wonder if it could have done better under Hideyoshi, or if things would be worse.. Or if things would be exactly the same, and the country still ruled by a man who would, for the best intended reasons, kill by his own hands one of the people he loved most in all the world.

Eventually you withdraw entirely from cities and towns and villages and sit on Uesugi's porch in his house in the forest - another empty house, haunted by memories of better times - writing long poems about nothing in particular, drinking on your own. Yumekichi diligently gathers and delivers letters to you from all over the country, people wanting to know if you are still alive, people wondering how you are. Toshiie and Matsu keeping you up to date on events back home, Chousokabe urging you to visit him for a drink, the little priestess asking if you've seen her raven-winged hero. A wedding invitation from the Tokugawa and an indignant letter from Oushuu which you gather is mostly Masamune being suspicious of Ieyasu's bride-to-be on the grounds of her being as tall as a man, never showing her face even within the palace grounds, and having a curiously shaped, silver-haired head... " _Could it be???_ " Masamune ends his letter cryptically. You put it down and have a good laugh, going at it for so long Yumekichi comes up and chatters worriedly at you.

You write back to Masamune, telling him to have a good time at _za party_ , but not to expect the bride to remember his name; also, to Ieyasu, congratulating him, and regretfully saying that you will not be able to make it. Yumekichi leaves to deliver your letters; you watch him disappear into the trees. You hold Nene's trinket for a while, feeling its small weight settle in your hand. After a while you take it off and hold it in your hand as you walk through the forest. You walk through the forest for as long as you can bear, not thinking about holding the trinket in your hand.. You come out of the trees, a sudden burst of blue sky and white clouds mirrored in the rice fields stretching from the horizon to your feet, and you hold up your hands, and they are empty. Now you are truly alone.


End file.
